[johngalt]

There's a discussion to be had here. If you're a foreign intelligence agency looking to commit espionage, how hard would it be to get someone inside a Verizon or AT&T? Imagine what type of pervasive data a potential adversary could gather via these means?

Something any major business with foreign competitors should consider before using cloud services or trusting telecom vendors.

[tigger]

I would be very surprised if at least one foreign agency at least has not already hacked into both Verizon and AT&T ... one could argue that the US govt has at least been trying to do it (semi) legitimately just to keep up.

[suredo]

maybe they should attack the perpetrators instead??

[tigger]

Maybe indeed, but what was easier?

[flyinRyan]

But what good does it do?

"Oh look, the bad guys are spying on our people, what can we do?"

"Stop them!"

"We can't!"

"Ok, let's spy on them too then!"

If this seems like a logical conversation then change "spy on" to "rape" and see if it still makes sense.

[suredo]

they could label them as terrorists and it becomes alot easier...

[tigger]

They're doing that now... bit too late.. But who's going to believe they needed a nuke to blast a few flies?

[gilgoomesh]

Or impersonate the NSA and divert their data to your servers.